Next move in O'Steen case: A reward

Published 10:00 pm, Sunday, November 3, 2002

A family snapshot shows Donna O'Steen and her husband, Rich Haynie, enjoying time on the water. O'Steen was killed Nov. 8, 2001.

A family snapshot shows Donna O'Steen and her husband, Rich Haynie, enjoying time on the water. O'Steen was killed Nov. 8, 2001.

Photo: / Family Photo

Next move in O'Steen case: A reward

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The cheery orange Halloween lights will come down this week at the Haynie home in Ballard. It's time to change seasons again, even for a family for whom everything changed horribly and forever one year ago this Friday.

Rich Haynie, his 12-year-old daughter, Morgan, and 14-year-old son, Kealan, have moved from the house with the Shilshole Bay view -- the home the kids have known their whole lives. They could not bear to stay where 53-year-old Donna O'Steen, wife, work partner and devoted mother of two, was tied and taped and stabbed to death Nov. 8 in an upstairs bedroom.

Touches from the old place give the new one a homey feel. A sailboat porch flag hangs by the door (Donna loved to sail). A sign indicates a security system is in place -- as it was at the last house.

When you enter the new place, the Portuguese water dog that followed Donna's every move noses insistently for petting. Scupper was with Donna that morning and, when the curly black head plops into your lap, you have to wonder what the dog's eyes saw. After the murder, Scupper refused to go up the stairs to the room where Donna died.

For Haynie, moving and "moving on" has been measured in a list of things to do next. Following the funeral came the memorial, the scattering of Donna's ashes in the Sound, by the Ballard Blinker. Then came months of counseling for himself and the kids. The move to the new house and a garage sale at the old one, now occupied by renters.

What now? With a year spent and still no clues, Haynie is turning to a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of whomever killed his wife that morning while he was at work, Kealan was at school and Morgan waited at her piano lesson for her mom to pick her up.

He hopes to distribute fliers for the reward at a candlelight vigil Friday night, possibly at a Ballard park yet to be named. Helping Haynie will be Shirley Lacy, the last person to talk by phone to her sister around 8:30 a.m., as Donna finished her morning routine.

Other than contacting TV shows like "Unsolved Mysteries," securing technical advice from a reward foundation in California and making his own routine calls to police, there isn't much Haynie can do now for Donna.

When he sees billboards around Seattle offering a $1 million reward for the killer of Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Wales, Haynie isn't resentful. "In fact, I kind of hope to hitchhike a little on that," he said, excusing himself to answer yet another cell phone call.

It was homicide detective Russ Weklych on the line, saying it's OK with police to go ahead with the reward.

Wales was killed in his Queen Anne home a month before Donna died, and news stories about Wales' death often carry a line mentioning O'Steen. It's no billboard but it's a small reminder to the public and to police that her murder, too, is unsolved.

When he isn't working at his marine insurance business or handling all of the kid appointments Donna used to do, Haynie works at his second job -- "trying to find out whoever committed the senseless murder of my wife," he said.

"If they had caught the guy, we'd be waiting for a trial right now," Haynie said. "But at least we'd know."

Until then, his sense of trust is pretty much in tatters, as is the security blanket that once enveloped his kids.

"I look at people and wonder, did they (the police) take a DNA sample of that man or that woman?" Haynie said. "You want to go and visit people, then you think, but he might have had access to the house."

He wonders about former neighbors, hired hands, the husbands of teachers at school.

Both kids carry cell phones now and want to know where their dad is at all times. They want him to be at the house before they come home from school.

With a year to absorb what has happened, Haynie is ready to probe for the details he couldn't handle at first. He wants to see the autopsy report. He wants to know how his wife was subdued before being bound, if she wasn't hit over the head.

"She was not a woman to be pushed around," he said.

If it was a burglary gone bad, as some police have said, why did "the guy" bring his own tape and knife?

If the police suspect that Haynie hired someone to kill his wife (they have told him that they don't), what would have been his reason? They're welcome to look through his accounts anytime to see no money is missing.

In Kealan's bedroom sits a cabinet missing six drawers. It contained Donna's jewelry -- most of it costume. The drawers are still in an evidence room somewhere, and Haynie wonders what was taken and whether pawn shops have been checked.

"Would your husband know what's in your jewelry box?" Haynie asks me.

There's really no rule book on what to do next. "You just have to kind of feel your way," he said.

He recently took his wedding ring off and put it in the bank for Kealan. He thinks he might consider going out to dinner with women friends after a year has passed.

Donna's own example actually helps him with that process: Her first husband died of cancer in 1983, and she started dating Haynie seriously in 1986.

"Watching her husband go through his illness was awful for her," Haynie said. "But at least she got to say goodbye."

Short of seeing Donna walk through his door alive, what Haynie longs for is a good lead, a clue, some kind of resolution.

Maybe Friday's vigil will get something going. After that, there is Thanksgiving to think about -- the second one without Donna.

And then, before it's time to haul out the Christmas lights, comes Donna's birthday, Dec. 2. She would have been 54.